City’s Affordable Housing Production Saw a Boost Last Year After Prior Plunge

After dropping the year before, affordable housing production was up again during the 12-month span that ended June 30, officials said Thursday—what advocates say is a welcomed boost but still a far cry from what’s needed as the city struggles to address record-high levels of homelessness.

After dropping the year before, affordable housing production was up again during the 12-month span that ended June 30, officials said Thursday—what advocates say is a welcomed boost but still a far cry from what’s needed as the city struggles to address record-high levels of homelessness.

The city financed the production of 26,682 affordable homes in Fiscal Year 2023, up 22 percent from the year prior. The tally includes more than 12,000 newly constructed units, as well as those preserved across the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD), the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and nearly 3,000 units at NYCHA converted through the public housing authority’s PACT program.

The new numbers—representing Adams’ first full fiscal year in office—come after affordable development hit a lull during the previous year, prompting HPD to lower its annual goal for income-restricted units created or preserved from 25,000 to 18,000. Even with the latest increase, production levels were lower than what the city produced during the last two full years of Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty, though Mayor Eric Adams said his administration focused on creating a greater share of homes for the most vulnerable tenants.

The new units, for example, included 1,923 supportive housing apartments—which come paired with support services for residents—as well as 3,574 reserved for formerly homeless tenants, the highest number of such apartments produced by the city within a year on record, officials said. Just under a quarter of units were for New Yorkers earning at or below 30 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), the equivalent of $38,130 for a family of three. 

“We are glad to see that the production numbers are a lot more than last year, and that they are closer to some of the recent historical numbers,” said Brendan Cheney, director of policy and operations at the New York Housing Conference. 

“We're especially excited to see the real focus on deep affordability,” he added, pointing to data showing that nearly a third of households in the city spent more than half of their income on rent in 2021. “Because that’s where the housing crisis is.”

Still, the city’s many housing problems remain far from solved: more than 107,000 people are staying in homeless shelters across the five boroughs, including tens of thousands of migrants who’ve arrived from the southern border over the last year.

Officials say the system is beyond capacity, and the administration has sought court permission to pause its shelter obligations for single adults, citing space constraints—a move advocates worry will lead to more people sleeping on the streets. 

“Given the scale of crisis and need, this isn’t time for celebration or self-congratulation, it is the time for serious action,” Craig Hughes, a social worker at MFJ Legal Services, said in a statement. 

He pointed to ongoing discrimination faced by New Yorkers with housing vouchers—a key tool in moving people from shelter into permanent homes—as well as the mayor’s recent decision to veto a package of Council bills that would have expanded eligibility for the rental assistance program (lawmakers subsequently moved to override that veto).

“The Mayor can make serious reforms needed to slow the crisis, but has simply chosen not to,” Hughes said.

Whether any development gains this year can be maintained into the future also remains to be seen.

Howard Slatkin, a former deputy at the New York City Department of City Planning and now executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, zeroed in on the city’s statistic that half of the new construction financed in FY2023 received 421-a—a controversial and since-expired state tax incentive. “That pipe has been shut off,” he said. 

And while this year’s budget includes an increase in funding for HPD and NYCHA, the city is facing economic headwinds. “Every drop of subsidy the city uses today does not go as far as it did two, three years ago,” he said. 

City Hall officials, though, touted other signs of progress in the FY2023 numbers: despite staffing shortages this year at city agencies that assist homeless New Yorkers, more people moved out of shelter into permanent housing than the year prior—an 18 percent increase—and the number of supportive housing placements grew by 43 percent, year over year. 

Still, thousands of supportive apartments remain vacant: As of July 17, the Department of Social Services reported 2,384 vacant supportive units, including 1,825 that were available and had not yet been linked to a prospective tenant.

Pascale Leone, executive director of The Supportive Housing Network of NY, called Thursday’s announcement “encouraging.”

“We commend HPD for achieving this important milestone while faced with significant challenges—including the acute staffing shortage that supportive housing providers are also experiencing, which is putting both staff and tenants at risk,” Leone said in a statement.

“While this is a meaningful step forward, we recognize that much more remains to be done, and we hope this forward momentum continues apace.”